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Daily Meme: Boston, One Year Later

Today marks the 1-year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing. Three people died in the attack, while over 270 were injured, many of them gruesomely; leg amputations abounded amongst the victims of the attack, given the angle of the bomb.

The city of Boston marked the day with a memorial service and flag-raising ceremony over the finish line of the race, attended by Vice President Joe Biden, Mayor Martin J. Walsh, Governor Deval Patrick, and former mayor Thomas Menino. A bomb scare by South Station this morning was a reminder of the sense insecurity that shook the city one year ago. This year's marathon will go on as planned on Monday April 21.

The lone surviving bomber, 20-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is currently being held in a federal medical facility, where as The New York Times reports, he remains incredibly isolated: "He cannot mingle, speak or pray with other prisoners. His only visitors are his legal team, a mental health consultant and his immediate family, who apparently have seen him only rarely ... Beyond being segregated from other prisoners—for their security and his, the government has stated—Mr. Tsarnaev may well spend little time outside his cell, period."

In February, a U.S. District Court judge set Tzarnaev's court date for November 3, an expedited schedule. One of Tsarnaev's defense lawyers, Judy Clarke, called the litigation schedule "virtually impossible.”

The defense team is expected to paint Dzhokar Tsarnaev as under the thumb of his older brother, Tamerlan, who died in a shoot-out with police last year. The older Tsarnaev became increasingly interested in radical Islam, and following a trip to his native Dagestan, Russian authorities informed the FBI that he "had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country’s region to join unspecified underground groups.” The Russians then failed to provide American authorities with several follow-up requests for information.

Further confirmation that these days, everything seems to come back to Russia acting shady as all get-out.

About the Author

Clare Malone is a freelance writer and member of the editorial staff of The New Yorker.Her work has appeared in The American Prospect, The Daily Beast, Slate, Bloomberg View, and Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology. She is a former Prospect web editor.